couchant
Pronunciation
  • (British) IPA: /ˈkaʊtʃənt/
Adjective

couchant (not comparable)

  1. (of an animal) Lying with belly down and front legs extended; crouching.
    • 1801, Robert Southey, Thalaba the Destroyer:
      The dogs, with eager yelp,
      Are struggling to be free;
      The hawks in frequent stoop
      Token their haste for flight;
      And couchant on the saddle-bow,
      With tranquil eyes, and talons sheath’d,
      The ounce expects his liberty.
    • 1865, Henry David Thoreau, Cape Cod, Chapter I. "The Shipwreck", page 14.
      There were the tawny rocks, like lions couchant, defying the ocean, whose waves incessantly dashed against and scoured them with vast quantities of gravel.
    • 1874, James Thomson, The City of Dreadful Night, XX
      Two figures faced each other, large, austere;
      A couchant sphinx in shadow to the breast,
      An angel standing in the moonlight clear;
    • 1922, Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room, Vintage Classics, paperback edition, page 91
      Or again, have you ever watched fine collie dogs couchant at twenty yards' distance?
  2. (heraldry) Represented as crouching with the head raised.
    • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.2:
      His crest was covered with a couchant Hownd, / And all his armour seem'd of antique mould [...].
Translations
  • Russian: лежащий



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